U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) released a letter sent to President Joe Biden requesting answers for numerous instances of lax oversight, improper planning, and dangerous decision-making in executing the military withdrawal from Afghanistan. In his letter, Cruz cites testimony from Secretary of State Antony Blinken before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Blinken admitted that officials overseeing Afghan evacuees had witnessed instances of sexual abuse and older men presenting young girls as their “wives.”
Blinken’s testimony, along with documents obtained by the Associated Press, shows that concerns of trafficking and sexual abuse of children are grounded in facts. The letter sent to Biden calls for him to inform the committee about the number of times sex crimes have been observed, how the officials handled instances of suspected polygamous marriages, child brides, and human trafficking, and what steps the Department of Defense is taking to address the issues.
Cruz notes that many people coming from Afghanistan may not understand the different laws in the United States. In Afghanistan, violence against women is routine. Around 90% of women report domestic abuse, and nearly 60% have been married as children. These customs are against federal laws in the United States. Without proper vetting of evacuees, Cruz believes rapists and human traffickers may be using the U.S. system to gain access to our country.
“These reports about trafficking and the horrific treatment of Afghan girls are in addition to reports that an Afghan male convicted of rape who had previously been deported was brought back during the evacuation,” Cruz said in a statement. “Such failures are why a group of Senators are demanding answers about what steps are being taken to vet individuals evacuated from Afghanistan.”
Cruz signed an op-ed piece for RealClearPolitics on September 14. He describes a discussion he had with a commanding general during the evacuation.
“Two weeks ago, I toured housing that’s being built at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. The camp will house up to 10,000 Afghan evacuees,” Cruz said. “At the time, there were flights coming in with evacuees every couple of hours. I asked the commanding general what they were doing to ensure each arriving Afghan evacuee had been properly vetted, and he told me that vetting was being done in Afghanistan.”
The letter calls on the President to answer the questions by September 30. Cruz has asked that the Department of Defense, Department of State, and the Department of Homeland Security make investigations into “whether and to what extent these reported incidents of child trafficking from Afghanistan are occurring and to provide a full public accounting of the United States’ role in evacuating offenders,” the statement reads.
“Child marriage, sexual abuse, and domestic abuse are widespread in Afghanistan, but illegal in the United States, but your administration has had no policy for dealing with these issues: the State Department requested “urgent guidance,” but as late as August 27 had not received it,” the letter to Biden reads.
The letter continues, “In any case, the United States has a moral obligation to ensure that our foreign policy is not complicit in human trafficking, sexual slavery, and abuse. But just as with the crisis at the southern border, where your policies continue to abet documented instances of human trafficking and sexual abuse, your chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan appears to have facilitated horrific abuses.”
